Re: What beer are you drinking? Winter 12/13

New Albion Ale, a recreation by Sam Adams of the legendary beer of that name brewed in Sonoma, CA from 1977-1982. Jack McAuliffe (now 68), the original brewer and co-owner of New Albion Brewery, worked with Jim Koch of Sam Adams to ensure a faithful reproduction. The beer is fairly pale and uses two-row barley malt and Cascade hops only. It is markedly bitter and stresses that element over aroma, the Cascade is probably used more for bittering than aroma. It has a medium body and a yeasty tang too albeit it is not bottle-conditioned as the original was. It appears to me to be roughly filtered, which is fine. In my view, this is very much in the style of pale English bitter beers, the "pint of bitter" kind of beer. It is 6% ABV but that is what those beers were when they first became popular in the early 1800's. McAuliffe served with the U.S. Navy at a submarine tender base in Holy Loch, Scotland in the mid-60's. He enjoyed the beers there and determined to brew an English-style pale ale when he came back, starting up in 1976 with a hand-built small brewery. Jack couldn't get financing to keep it going after '82 but today has sort of re-entered the brewing scene and has certainly made a splash IMO with this historic pale ale that is the inspiration for the hundreds of pale ales and IPAs out there today. (It shares that distinction with Liberty Ale of the very fine Anchor Brewery of San Francisco). It doesn't taste like a Dale Pale Ale or Stone IPA, it cuts its own swath, but anyone interested in what a certain kind of English pale ale was, and is, shouldn't miss it.